


Paraenesis

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: To Die as Lovers May [2]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Cisswap, Devil's Minion era, F/F, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:31:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6888118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armida's past informs her present, and that, in turn, Danny's future.<br/>There are love stories, and there are rituals.<br/>The two only rarely intersect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paraenesis

**Author's Note:**

> Tromperie's first entry into this verse.

When it started, Armida had only a piecemeal script for dealing with Danny. So much of her past had been shattered on the floor at Santino’s feet, been picked up in fits and starts during those years in the dark before Lestat appeared like the blinding sun (and left again as quickly, leaving a bitter, blistered hole in Armida’s newly woken heart). She’d vowed not to be left behind after that, standing in the ruins of the coven that had stolen her life. Her eyes were ever-steely and prepared for the next avenue of escape: from the catacombs to the stage; from the dreary opulence of the company into Louisa’s seeking arms (but not, it quickly became clear, seeking her). Facing the prospect of wandering a new century on her own, she’d clutched to the first mortal to cross her path.

Now Danny was the one running, hiding out in seedy dive bars as evening came on and running herself ragged from country to country. It set Armida’s dead heart pumping, to see such a frail existence struggling to sustain itself. Danny left trails of cigarette butts and imprints of combat boots; now and then Armida would let herself be glimpsed in the crowd, just to watch those smoky violet eyes widen. And when she caught her prey she would pounce with kisses and questions, drinking deep from that bitter-black mind every mystery of the brave new world around them; and at last, overcome with love, she’d acquiesce to Danny’s pleadingly outstretched throat.

Just a taste. Just another scar.

She would make sure to frighten her love when she vanished, and the game would start anew. If she kept to the shadows, her guide would never tire of her, or step too close and realize she was a shallow reflection of the world around her. Her shattered countenance still preserved the reflections of those who’d contributed to the cracks – if pressed, she couldn’t have said who “Armida” was.

The first time she bought Danny clothes, she’d followed an impulse. Her lovely Danielle would look so perfect in silk, she’d thought, and bought a dress that suited that long, lean torso and elegant limbs. Anything to replace the tattered, stinking rags that had become the mortal girl’s uniform. Danny had looked at it in disgust, but allowed Armida to strip her, wash her clean, and dress her in finery.

Over and over Armida told her what a portrait she was, what a frail gift of mortality. The perfect human. And then Danny had grown angry and torn through the thin fabric, standing naked in front of the mirror covered in bruises and scabs.

“This is what being mortal looks like,” she’d spat. “Not so pretty, is it?”

She was wrong. It was beautiful.

“Come with me. The opera starts at eight, and your hair isn’t done,” she’d said instead.

That morning, as she waited for death, Armida had remembered how her mistress had brought her home from the brothel, thin and frightened. She’d wept and begged to stay in slavery, sure that the devil she knew was better. How she had trembled as cold marble hands had stripped her naked, trying and unable to find the dead place in her heart where she could survive what was to come. She’d done it before, many times. That her body had developed without the blood had made her…popular. Her owners had known it. Surely this new woman did too. The Patron, they called her, even though she was a woman. Maria.

“You will call me maestra,” she said, and Armida screwed her eyes shut.

And then Maria, beautiful and fearsome Maria, had lowered her into a steaming tub and washed away her past with icy hands, like a baptizing angel.

So she did the same for Danny, tipping her head back in an opulent hotel bathtub and carefully wetting each jagged strand of blonde. She still, acutely, remembered every sensation: the way Danny’s head had tipped heavy into her hands, the loosening of her muscles and the bob in her abused throat as she swallowed.

All the threats of death she had used to herd her mortal guide, and here was complete submission. She felt her heart contract in agony, on the threshold of weeping at the thought of this life being torn from her. Death followed at her heels, flowed freely from her hands. But she had never been able to save anyone.

She thought, desperate, of her mistress.

Maria had bought her clothes, too. She was strict about appearance, had to be as fool mortals came to her door with sneers on their faces. They had no conception of what they were trying to condemn. Armida always hoped for their deaths, hiding behind tapestries with a smirk on her face. She knew what her mistress was. She was special, and needed.

Her mistress would call her when they were alone and dress her in fine clothes, above the apprentice boys she spent her days with. Always too tight around her swelling chest.

“It’s such a shame,” her mistress would sigh, and Armida would flush and try to crush her breasts flat. On the streets they leered at her, but this cold inadequacy was suddenly worse. She would have taken a knife to her body if she’d thought it would make her what her mistress wanted. But the scars, she knew, would only bring new disappointment in her (she’d been scolded, more than once, for fighting).

Maria painted her as a nymph at play on an island hidden in the mists, as a cherubic wisp. And when Armida tried to rush into her arms, begging for that sweet and painful kiss, Maria had held her at arm’s length and reminded her of what became of ruined girls.

The present had no more girls to ruin. Danny had known sex long before Armida came along; she knew how to kiss and moan and say “yes” to Armida’s wondering hands and sharp teeth, and was shameless as she wrapped her arms around her vampiric lover’s small, cold body. It caught Armida’s curiosity and inflamed it, created a need to see her beloved morph and change under the touch of others. She began to lure in those who adored her from afar, introduced the women to Danny’s shrinking, blushing presence and nudged them together while she watched from her careful approving distance. She was free with praise, always, breathless even though she had stopped needing air half a millennium before. Danny was never ruined. She was resplendent.

When Armida caught the eye of a broad, handsome man Danny had turned angry and red. She’d tossed “no!” in Armida’s face like a punishing slap, and fled to the next city. There were no more men.

She’d never said no to Maria. She suffered and yearned, scrutinized and yet held apart, until her need drove her mad. She’d crept out during the day in her page’s clothes, her finery tucked under one arm as an offering. She’d laid them out for Benedetto and swelled with pride at his delight, dressed him in them as her mistress had done to her. She’d let the poor noble fuck her, reveling in the stink of sweat and semen Maria would surely smell, and the thought of forcing her mistress to look at her at last.

When she came home that night, the halls were pregnant with a terrible silence. None of the pages, Ricardo swore, had told. But Maria had looked down at her with the eyes of a terrible goddess and ordered her to strip – when Armida wasn’t fast enough she’d torn them away, the shredded finery already a stab. Those material reminders, so small, were what made her something valuable. Maria touched her at last with those perfect cold hands and pried her open rough and bruising, coming away with the remaining traces of her disobedience. Fingers hard as stone were forced down Armida’s throat until the girl gagged and begged for more of it; anything not to be ignored. This was no more than just punishment for her faithlessness. And her mistress took pity on her.

“Oh, my tempting child. You deserve some pleasure from this life,” the vampire said. “I can instruct you in purer affections, if it will safeguard you from yourself.”

Maria took the fear of her body from her: she only had to look to those hands that dressed her and fed her and gave pleasure and pain. Maria knew her better than she knew herself.

Armida didn’t understand Danny at all. Even with her thoughts an open book, the mortal would still find ways to surprise her. Her laugh was coarse and warm, and she patched and repatched old boots even after Armida showered her in enough cash to buy a whole store. She ran from Armida’s presence and grew angry at her controlling hand, but fell apart when she was on her own and ran weeping into Armida’s arms when they were reunited, cursing her for not arriving sooner.

Danny begged Armida to kill her even as she professed her love, unaware of the agony she caused with those words. She railed at Armida’s endless questions, but sat beside her when the vampire sank into the soothing stimulus of an experiment (there was peace in taking mechanisms to pieces, a little metal microcosm of the world whose workings eluded her).

Danny held Armida close as morning came, cheeks blushing pink and eyes dark with exhaustion. Armida loved her then, more than the waking world. Loved the ferocity that told her “no,” and always came back. Loved that Danny needed her, and yet refused to let her play mistress.

It ended. It always ended. Maria had vanished in flames, and Santino had come for her, deciding anew who she was. If she was gone, she wondered, who would Danny become?

In the end, she was the one who tore them apart. As she watched her beloved die beneath her hands, she hated herself. She’d broken the pattern, the rules, again. This was her punishment for refusing to let Danny slip away into the peace of death. For refusing to be alone, the selfish child yet again. She knew even as she cut her wrist that Danny would wake with eyes unclouded and see her as she really was. Cruel. Distant. Ruined.


End file.
